View full sizeKen Bae, right, with glasses, and friend Bobby Lee, left, during their undergraduate days at the University of Oregon, 1988-90.Bobby Lee

Bobby Lee, who attended the University of Oregon with Kenneth Bae in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was up all night after hearing the news that Bae was sentenced to 15 years of “compulsory labor” in a North Korean prison.

Lee said Bae’s family in Lynnwood, Washington feel like they are entering uncharted waters because previous detainees in North Korea were held there under a different regime.

“His family is trying to figure out what to do,’’ Lee said as calls and emails from news agencies around the world clogged his email basket and voicemail box. “They are calling whoever they can and in consultations. It’s hard to deal with this.”

View full sizeRecent photo of Ken Bae, from Facebook page asking people to help get him released from a North Korean prisonFacebook

Bae was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, according to official state media. Friends and colleagues described Bae as a devout Christian from Washington state but based in the Chinese city of Dalian who traveled frequently to North Korea to feed the country's orphans.

On Saturday, North Korea announced that Bae, 44, was being tried in the Supreme Court on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.

View full sizeBobby Lee, college roommate of Kenneth Bae, is seeking his release from North Korea.Stuart Tomlinson/The Oregonian

"In the process of investigation he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK (North Korea) with hostility toward it," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said. "His crimes were proved by evidence. He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgment."

Pyongyang's official state media said Bae's trial took place Tuesday before the Supreme Court, but the dispatch provided few new details other than the 15 year sentence of “compulsory labor.”

Bae is at least the sixth
American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were
deported or released without serving out their terms, some after trips
to Pyongyang by prominent Americans, including former U.S. presidents
Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

With already abysmal U.S.-North
Korean ties worsening since a long-range rocket-launch more than a year
ago, Pyongyang is fishing for another such meeting, said Ahn Chan-il,
head of the World Institute for North Korea Studies think tank in South
Korea.

"North Korea is using Bae as bait to make such a visit
happen. An American bigwig visiting Pyongyang would also burnish Kim
Jong Un's leadership profile," Ahn said. Kim took power after his
father, Kim Jong Il, died in December 2011.

"While Washington will do
everything possible to spare an innocent American from years of hard
labor, U.S. officials are aware that in all likelihood the North Korean
regime wants a meeting to demonstrate that the United States in effect
confers legitimacy on the North's nuclear-weapon-state status," Patrick
Cronin, a senior analyst with the Washington-based Center for a New
American Security, said in an email.

Cronin called Bae's conviction "a hasty gambit to force a direct dialogue with the United States."

Bae was tried in the country's Supreme Court on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. He could've faced the death penalty.

“Knowing Kenneth from college, he’s such a warm-hearted person, I can’t imagine him breaking the law,’’ said another college buddy, Dennis Kwon. He said it’s possible that Bae took photos of orphans begging for food: “He probably couldn’t walk away from what he saw.”

Since Sunday, Lee and Kwon have been calling friends as well as Oregon’s congressional delegation to see what can be done to release their old college buddy. They are working on a website to complement a Facebook page that went up in late December. Then the news came Wednesday night that Bae was facing 15 years in a North Korean prison.

Lee said the family is being cautious in their reaction to avoid putting Bae in jeopardy while in custody.

“That’s the last thing we want to do,’’ Lee said. “We’re dealing with a country that’s not very transparent. It’s hard to know what’s the right thing to do.”